Perhaps the hottest payment product going for the past several years, debit cards are showing signs of cooling off. “It's almost become a broken record that debit transactions are growing at double-digit rates, but we're seeing a slowing in that rate,” Tony Hayes, a partner at research and consulting firm …

With its acquisition of prepaid card transaction processor and program manager InComm Inc., First Data Corp. is picking up one of only a few major distributors of prepaid card products, a move that hands the Denver-based processing giant a substantial stake for the first time in the crucial retail distribution …

A veteran of previous efforts to turn driver's licenses into payment cards is working with the operator of an online consumer-loyalty network on a plan intended to introduce automated clearing house transactions tied to shoppers' driver's licenses at brick-and-mortar stores by 2009. Linda Bryant, who has formed a processor called …

Their networks continue to handle ever-increasing transaction volumes, but the chief executives of both MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. warn of “challenging” times for the U.S. payments market, particularly credit. Still, both bank card networks in the past 24 hours reported strong profit growth for their quarters ended March 31. …

After a long period of downsizing and financial turbulence, non-bank ATM network operator TRM Corp. says it's getting its act in order and is ready to grow again. Portland, Ore.-based TRM just bought the New Jersey-based Access To Money network in a $15 million deal that brings another 4,200 ATMs …

It's the new, old payment system. That's essentially how an electronic-payments startup called eLayaway LLC is billing itself as it prepares for bigger things following two years of testing and a low-key rollout to merchants and consumers. Tallahassee, Fla.-based eLayaway's slogan is “credit is overrated.” Its system allows consumers, once …

The troubled buyout of Alliance Data Systems Inc. by private-equity firm The Blackstone Group officially died this past weekend, a death that came as no surprise to the payments industry. But still alive is Alliance's effort to sell its merchant-acquiring business built around the former BSI Business Services Inc. front-end …

The Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 has gotten lots of press for its plan to regulate interchange, but merchant-acquiring industry lawyers say that bill has little chance of passage. The far greater threat is a tax proposal for finding merchants' supposedly underreported cash receipts?a proposal that could forcibly …

In an effort to reach very small online merchants seeking a streamlined way to process payments, Authorize.Net on Tuesday unveiled a service it calls Simple Checkout. The new service allows the merchant to use a Web interface to automatically create the code necessary to place a “Buy Now” button on …

A 3-year-old startup in Alameda, Calif., is introducing a mobile wallet that combines contactless payments based on near-field communication (NFC) technology with person-to-person payments and mobile banking. Mobile Candy Dish Inc. last week rolled out its Blaze Mobile Wallet, which works on the AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel wireless networks …